In-Depth Archive

Left-wing radicalism in South Asia is stronger than at any time since the Cold War, with both India and Nepal challenged by Maoist uprisings. Because it impacts one of the world’s emerging powers, the situation in India is perhaps of greater global significance. But the Nepal case is just as instructive, if not more so. For Nepal’s largely impoverished population of 25 million, which lives in a territory the size of Florida, a bloody decade of people’s war has since 2006 given way to “peace.” Yet to call the situation in Nepal peace is appropriate only if one believes that […]

In July 1967, at the height of Mao Zedong’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” an editorial appeared in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily heralding “a peel of spring thunder” sweeping across India. An uprising of tea-plantation workers led by Maoist militants in Naxalbari, a poor and remote district near India’s Darjeeling region, had come to Beijing’s attention. Inspired by the Chinese revolution, the militants imagined that Naxalbari was to be the beginning of a popular revolt that would end with the red flag flying over New Delhi. Such dreams were premature. Within months, the government had brutally suppressed […]

The 2008 and 2010 Latinobarometro Polls, taken in 18 countries of Latin America, underline the fact that, even though the GDP of most Latin American countries has been improving since 2001, there are deep flaws in democratic political systems throughout the region. The relative popular dissatisfaction stems from deep-rooted socioeconomic inequalities as well as distrust and lack of confidence in police forces, legislatures and political parties. There is also a growing popular consciousness of unfulfilled rights, leading to rising demands for their enjoyment. Peruvians are especially disgruntled. Peru’s economy has grown faster than any of the other bigger countries in […]

One of the most complex and difficult humanitarian problems confronting the international community today is that of protracted refugee situations. These are refugee situations that have moved beyond the emergency phase, but where solutions in the foreseeable future do not exist. Many of the refugees left behind in these situations have to live under terrible conditions, warehoused in camps or stuck in shanty towns, exposed to dangers, and with restrictions placed upon their rights and freedoms. I first became aware of the significance and dimensions of the contemporary problem of prolonged exile in 2001, after a brief visit to the […]

One need not venture far into the world of refugee assistance to encounter a maxim whose air of axiomatic truth can be a conversation-stopper, and whose terms, like sacred postulates of the refugee-response system, are rarely unpacked: The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has the refugee-protection mandate. But several issues within that black box are worth illuminating. Namely, what does “refugee protection” mean? What is the nature of the “mandate”? And is it true that UNHCR is its unique possessor? While this might seem like a dry line of inquiry, like so much else these days, […]

Looking down from the hilltops of Bogotá’s southern rim, a sea of shingled rooftops and cinderblock huts stretches toward the horizon. These ever-expanding slums are home to tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Colombians who have fled their homes elsewhere in the country to escape the country’s long-running armed conflict. Here, Lady Carabali, a mother of five, lives in a damp, ramshackle home made from pieces of wood and scrap metal, with no running water or electricity. She was driven from her small farm on the Pacific coast by paramilitary violence more than a decade ago. Each day, […]